Asa Butterfield is only 14, and already the Islington, London, native has worked with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson and starred in the affecting Holocaust drama The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Now he plays the title role in Hugo, Martin Scorsese's first foray into family-friendly filmmaking - in 3-D, no less.

Q: Were you aware of Martin Scorsese before this?

A: I hadn't heard his name. I just knew of his films. It was really from the reactions of people that I realized how big this was.

Q: Which of his films have you seen?

A: I've seen Aviator, Shutter Island and The Departed Most of his are 18s (rated R), so it's probably best I haven't been able to see them. I love Marty's films because he's so different from every other director. He's such a perfectionist. You can really see how that affects the film when it's finished. I see things that he's done in Hugo that he's also done in his other films.

Q: Did you view them before you started shooting, sort of like homework?

A: He did give me homework - old films (that are instrumental in the backstory) of Hugo, Georges Méliès films.

Watching films that inspired Marty, that sort of inspired me to want to do something on the other side of the camera. One day, I want to do some directing. A lot of the things he gave me have changed the way I work.

Q: Can you point to any specifically?

A: The films he gave me by Akira Kurosawa, a Japanese director. Like The Seven Samurai, which sort of inspired all the modern, great action-battle films. Marty was also actually in one of the films (Dreams, 1990, in which he played Vincent van Gogh). Because they're so old, they're all in black and white. You see films nowadays, fighting films, and they're all CGI and overplayed. Whereas his films, they're really sort of true, if you know what I mean.

Q: Who on your set particularly surprised you?

A: When I first heard I was working with Sacha (Baron Cohen), I thought he was going to be always cracking jokes. But he was very serious. Everyone had to call him by his character's name, the Station Inspector. When he wasn't filming, he would stay in character.

Q: What do you most remember about making the film?

A: Working with everyone. It was such a long shoot, about eight months. So the cast and the crew, it was one big family. It's not so much the filming that's the memory; it's the process of it. Meeting people and making friends, that stays with you.

Q: If you could pick a famous role to play, or kind of film to be in, what would that be?